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The Piano Guys are an American musical group consisting of Jon Schmidt, Steven Sharp Nelson, Paul Anderson, and Al van der Beek. They gained popularity through YouTube, where they posted piano and cello renditions of popular songs and classical music.

Beethoven's 5 Secrets

In 2012 the American Heritage Lyceum Philharmonic (Youth Orchestra), and its director, Kayson Brown, approached with the idea of a piece based on Beethoven's 5th symphony. The orchestra performed "Beethoven's Secrets" with The Piano Guys on YouTube which had received 2 million hits within 2 months of its release. It was OneRepublic's Secrets with parts from Beethoven's 5th symphony, a cello and orchestral cover. The vocal version features YouTube star Tiffany Alvord.

This video shows Steven Sharp Nelson playing Moonlight, a piece he composed for electric cello inspired by Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and the melody from Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd movement. It was posted to YouTube on July 14, 2011.

He gave us great pieces that went from simple exercises to small "pop" pieces to large symphonies. All of them were crafted to teach or express something.

Some were even ingeniously crafted with a misinterpreted "voicelessness" which was to allow the player to reinterpret the pieces any way he/she felt necessary at the moment. Moonlight Sonata 1 & 2, for instance, have a paucity of expression described and even rhythms at slow paces... boring! ... If you play them like a robot. Add your own emotion and they pop alive, inflating with personal style! They become methods of inner communication, and I believe he crafted them to be such.

That guy was intense. His music should be played with intensity contained, smoldering, exploding, brooding.

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Currently working on/memorizing..."It's You" from Robotech"He's A Pirate""Crazy Bone Rag""Claire DeLune (finally)"